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Charleene
Closshey - Filmmaker - Composer - Actor |
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Charleene Closshey has been on a red hot creative streak since the
spring of 2018. The cinematic release of the film she produced and
starred in,
No Postage Necessary during
the summer of 2018 was
followed by the release of the soundtrack for the album in October of
2018. Her new orchestral arrangement for the song “I Heard the Bells On
Christmas Day,” peaked at # 24 on the AC charts and the Holiday charts
in America. The Christmas song is a precursor for the full length
Christmas album, which will be released in time for the 2019 Christmas
season and it is produced by six time Grammy Award winning producer /
sound engineer Brent Mayer. If your head is not spinning by now Closshey
is also releasing her album Only
Love Remains and as we write this we are getting close to the date
for the release of the first single from the album. Charleene Closshey’s
short film Perception did
well on the festival tour and she received numerous awards for the music
she composed for Perception.
We are out of breath after that whirlwind tour of the past year of
Charleene Closshey’s career and you probably are as well, so let’s turn
out attention to our recent conversation with this multi-talented and
creatively brilliant native Floridian.
Even though No Postage Necessary
was in theaters during the summer of 2018, it can still be viewed
through a variety of means, iTunes, Amazon and through the new media
platform Vevue.
We brought in people from all over the world to be a part of the team.
If anything was to go wrong it was easy to say hey mom can you pick up
the phone and help us to call in a few favors here and there.
Fortunately, nothing did go wrong. If you go into a community that
doesn’t know you, there is a little more of a relationship development
time and we didn’t have that (time). In Tampa the relationships were
already in place. The community was incredibly supportive of the film,
so we were confident that the producing wouldn’t affect the creative
side. That wouldn’t be the case for every script, but for this one it
was. It was a very interesting experience and it was very intense. It is
not something I jump up and do all of the time.
I am a kid of two entrepreneurs, so I know what it is like to go out and
find creative synergies that are good for everybody. I enjoy that and I
enjoy connecting with others, while finding positive solutions. That is
really what a producer gets to do from inception all of the way to
completion.
The film made its debut in the beautiful historic Tampa theater and
people came in from Los Angeles and London. All of the people who showed
up on set to be extras didn’t know what it was like to be on a set and
they didn’t know what it is like to have a twelve or fourteen hour day
when you sit in a room. We were filming in August in Florida and it was
103 degrees outside and it was one hundred percent humidity and they
were walking up and down the street time and time again. It was a once
in a lifetime experience for them. Our first screening was here in
Tampa, before we took it to Los Angeles and it was a lot of fun.
I enjoyed every aspect of it from producing, as well as creating the
character Josie and scoring the film too.”
Charleene Closshey provided some interesting insights when we asked her
what made her the perfect person to play the character Josie in
No Postage Necessary.
“Is there ever any one perfect person for anything? Is there only one
perfect Macbeth? Is there only one perfect Cleopatra? Is there only one
perfect, fill in the blank. I think one of the most exciting things
about art is the ability to have completely different perspectives about
it. Every actor has a different perspective and takes on a particular
character. There are probably many other women who would create
fantastic versions of Josie, but it just happened in this instance that
it was something for me.
It is like an artist, a landscape by Van Gogh is very different than a
landscape by Dali. I don’t know if there ever is just one perfect
person. I think we would all tell that story a little differently. My
Macbeth would be very different than yours and that is great. It is the
same material, but a different life that gets breathed into that
character.”
As for why and how George Blagden was cast to play opposite Closshey as
Sam, she says, “George is great. Jeremy worked with Sharon Howard-Field
our casting director, who is London and Los Angeles based. She has done
a lot of fun pieces like Grumpy Old Men (Editor’s
Note: Sharon Howard-Field has
a plethora of films to her credit, including no less than ten that are
either being released in 2019 or are in various stages of production.)
To get through to Jeremy you had to impress Sharon and George absolutely
did. There were multiple other actors, most of whom were U.K. based. You
can find great actors anywhere, but there was something about the U.K.
training and perspective that I think really helped bring the subtle
aspects of the Sam character to life. When you watch the film for the
first fifteen minutes you probably don’t like Sam very much. How do you
have a hero that the audience doesn’t like? George found the places of
goodness in Sam and he allowed us as the audience to see them. It took
very delicate handling and
balance to be able to create that and he did.
Josie only knows the good side. She doesn’t see the shadow side of Sam
until the very end. My experience with George as an actor is he is very
giving. He presents energy in the space between the two of you and he
allows you to do with it as you want. He then takes it back. It becomes
this ebb and flow. That is what acting is, willingness to give, a
willingness to be present and a willingness to explore with another
person and he did. It was a great time working with him. He is very
technically based and in that technique there is a complete freedom for
exploration. I enjoyed my time on set with George.”
Josie is a single mother and Charleene is not a mother. Josie is a widow
and Charleene is not, so how did Charleene Closshey prepare for becoming
Josie in the movie?
“Sympathy and empathy are two very profound emotions that we can
experience. I don’t think we need to have someone else’s specific
experiences in order to have an understanding of and compassion for
them. We never really could, even if we both had the same experiences.
Even if I was a widow my experience would be a very different experience
from what Josie had. Understanding this (provides) great freedom for me
to explore unencumbered the life this person would have experienced
outside of my own construct. If anything I think it was easier, because
I didn’t have my own (stuff) to get in the way of her emotions and her
expressions. I don’t think that is the only way to create a character. I
think when you share similar experiences, for instance we are both
singers, so that was a different kind of color and understanding to play
with. When you share the experience it will color the character a little
bit differently and each character will be created a little bit
differently. We may not have the same experiences, but we have all had
elements of loss. We all know what it is to grieve for someone or
something. There are a lot of different kinds of death that we
experience in life. Whether or not it is the same specific (type) of
death, we all get it. It is an emotion, color and a vibration that can
be tapped into and specificity matters less than the purity of the
actual emotion,” she says.
Closshey describes No Postage
Necessary as, “a romantic comedy and two lost souls are trying to
rediscover their voices.
One of the cool things about this movie is it is the first movie in
history to ever release by a blockchain technology, which means you can
go online and stream the film using crypto currency. Check out the block
view app called Vevue. Vevue is a social media platform that is video
based and it is the first functioning platform of its kind. By quarter
two of this year (2019) there will be some really cool changes happening
with Vevue. Right now you can download the app to your iPhone and the
android app will be coming out in the next two months. You can also
stream online at vevue.com. You can get into the system and using crypto
currency you can stream No
Postage Necessary anywhere in the world.”
Charleene Closshey also released the short film
Perception in 2018.
“It was really well received. I won multiple awards for the music on it.
I worked with a dear friend that I knew from twenty years ago. He came
to me with a vision of a short film. It had a great festival stint. It
is grounded in magical realism,” she says.
It is difficult to imagine anyone not being positively affected after
conversing with Charleene Closshey, as she enthusiastically talks about
her creative endeavors and even life in general.
“We have a big year ahead of us. I am releasing two albums this year. In
October 2018 we released the soundtrack for
No Postage Necessary. We
combined the live tracks with the film score. That was a fun little
album.
This past Christmas I released my first radio single, “I Heard the Bells
On Christmas Day,” and I was overwhelmed and overjoyed. It finished
number thirty-five on the 2018 holiday charts. On Christmas Day we were
number twenty-four and number twenty-three was Lady Gaga. It was also
number twenty-four on the media based AC charts. That was a special
experience. “I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day,” is a teaser for the
Christmas album that will be coming out this November (2019). Christmas
is my favorite time of the year. I love the magic of the season and the
goodness that seems to float in the air no matter where you go. The
holidays have always held a special place in my heart.
Before that we are releasing a full album,
Only Love Remains (now
available) that is produced by Brent Mayer is a six time Grammy winner.
You may recognize his name, as he is the gentleman who discovered The
Judds. He has worked with Elvis, he had a record company back in the day
with Bobby Darin and he engineered Ike and Tina’s
Proud Mary: The Best of Ike &
Tina Turner. He also engineered the
The Age of Aquarius album by
the 5 th Dimension. He has quite the background. It has been such a joy
and pleasure to work with him,” Closshey says.
Let’s back up Charleene, because you had a unique experience working on
your Christmas album.
“I wrote an original composition of “Ave Maria,” and it is for a soprano
soloist and a boys choir. I was working with Four For Music and I told
them I needed a boys choir they said great, we have the perfect one. I
said fantastic. As it turned out it was the National Boys Choir of
Bulgaria. One of the gentlemen from Four For Music is one of the top
authorities in Bulgaria of Bulgarian sacred music. His son is in that
particular boys choir. They came in and recorded it and I thought wow
this is great.
A few days after the session I received an email from the session
conductor saying that she really liked that piece and she asked
permission to include it in their Christmas concert that they perform on
Christmas day in the Bulgarian capital. I thought about it for a half a
second and I said yeah (light laughter, as in do I really have to think
about this twice?). Hence the trip to Bulgaria (in the fall of 2018) and
we filmed a music video with the boys choir (singing) that song. The
film is in editing right now and it looks stunning. I am so excited
about it. We were able to enjoy and experience the concert. It was the
first time that I had heard that composition live. It was a magical and
surreal experience,” she says.
Closshey explains how she first became connected with Four For Music and
eventually with the Bulgarian music scene.
“In 2017 I had a track that we were working on and I told my producer
this needs full orchestration and he said oh we can do strings here in
Nashville and I said, no, no a full orchestra. A dear friend of mine
several years prior had turned me on to a couple of different
organizations in eastern Europe that they contract with and he would
Skype in and conduct his own live sessions in a studio in Los Angeles
that he was recording. I thought this is brilliant.
For a lot of projects when you don’t want to sacrifice quality, but you
have limited resources, you have to find ways to be creative. There is
only so much programming that you can do. Programming is great and I
have done my share of programming and especially on projects that didn’t
have the budget to facilitate a live orchestra or the breadth and depth
of session players that you would typically get on major motion
pictures. They still want that sound, so you have to figure out ways (to
make that happen).
When we were considering that track in 2017, I started researching and I
found this wonderful group out of Sofia the capital of Bulgaria. I
started working with them and I loved them. They are brilliant and the
musicians are topnotch. They really take care of their players. I’m a
Capricorn, so I research extensively and I take copious notes and I look
at things from every possible angle. I analyze the situation, but once I
pull the trigger I pull it pretty hard.
While I was going through the research I narrowed it down to two
different organizations and the thing that sold me on Four For Music was
a behind the scenes video of one of the sessions they did. It showed a
quick (clip) of a ping pong table that a bunch of their players were
gathered around and at which they were playing in between sessions. As a
violinist and former session player that went a really long way, because
it showed me how much they really care about their people. It is not
just about the commerce, it really is connected to the people who are
making the craft and the artistry that goes into everything that they
do. I worked with them on several different projects last year and in
fact one of the projects that we worked on was the Christmas album that
I recorded last August and September.
I have also continued to work extensively with the choir and orchestra
out of Bulgaria, because it is considerably more cost effective for me
to get the same quality that I would state side with this particular
orchestra and group. As an independent artist I don’t have $100,000 to
throw at a track.
Four For Music (is comprised of) four gentlemen who are partners and
they each have a different specialty within the production field. They
contract all around the world.”
Charleene Closshey grew up in Plant City, Florida, the winter strawberry
capital of the world, so she proudly tells this writer. She attended a
performing arts high school in Lakeland, about thirty minutes away and
she studied violin performance.
Although her parents have always been very supportive of her career
choices, she says, “If my mom had her way I would be a horse woman who
ran an international conglomerate business. If my father had his way, I
would be a karate demonstrating lawyer (she
laughs). I do have a business degree. I finished my undergraduate
degree in three years and I actually majored in marketing management. I
also majored in exercise science. I finished two degrees in three years
and I took a year off and then I was planning on going back and getting
a MBA and I started performing and it was all downhill from there
(laughter).”
As you already have sensed to describe Charleene Closshey as being
passionate and driven would be an understatement and she appears to have
inherited those qualities from her parents.
I pretty well came out of the womb ready to go. My mom has a very strong
personality and she is very much a type A and especially at that time.
She was determined and industrious. Her story is so inspirational. She
was raised on a farm with a dirt floor. Her parents didn’t want her to
go to college, but she put herself through college with multiple jobs.
She took her younger brother to school. She was one of three women in
the business department in the sixties when women were not welcome in
that field. She is really inspiring. Later on she went back (to school)
in her sixties and she got her doctorate,” she tells us.
We might accurately say that Charleene Closshey’s career began when she
was two years old.
“When I was three years old we were going to lunch and it was a Sunday
afternoon after church. I was dressed in my pretty blue dress. In the
mall where we were having lunch there was a sign that said free baby
pictures and my parents thought hey, what the heck. You go and sign a
waiver and you do your thing. A few weeks later my mom got a letter that
said congratulations you daughter has been chosen by Northern Bathroom
Tissue. It is interesting how the good things, the funny things, the
little winks and the universal winks that can happen just by being in
the right place at the right time. That is all it was. That picture was
(used) for twenty years. I still have the picture to prove it. They had
taken the photo and turned it into a hand drawn illustration. You can
still look it up and find it online. It’s not something that you walk
around and say (her voice deepens)
I’m the baby on Northern Bathroom Tissue,” she recalls.
Closshey also began to play the piano at age two and yes she had a piano
teacher at age two.
“What do you do with a two year old? When they sat me in front of a
piano there was a lot that they could do. My piano teacher taught me how
to read music, before I could actually read words. Music has always been
a huge part of my life. Songs and hearing portions of songs trigger
something in the mind. For me it has been that way since day one. I hear
colors and I look at patterns and fabrics and I hear the vibration of
it. It is how I interact with the world too. For me everything is
vibration based. If something feels right you do it. Because I think in
sound, sometimes to cross the barrier and to think in words is a bit
more challenging,” she says.
Charleene Closshey’s musical journey had moments shared with Charlie
Daniels as the performed in concert and dueled on their fiddles to “The
Devil Went Down to Georgia.” She also shared the stage with Josh Groban,
Mannheim Steamroller, Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Frank Sinatra, Jr.
As far as Closshey’s acting career goes, should we be surprised at all
when she tells us, “I have been on stage since I was a baby. They would
carry me out on stage for shows. These stages were in 10,000 seat
auditoriums. I have always been accustomed to being in front of a lot of
people. I think it is interesting what the universe brings us at
different times and how the experience prepares us for the next step and
the next step after that. For me acting is always something that I have
done and not just acting on stage, but creating characters and creating
a story greater than yourself and contributing to something greater than
yourself.
I have acted all of my life, mostly on stage. I did some screen stuff
early on, but there really wasn’t a big outlet for it where I was
growing up in Florida. The industry really isn’t here. That did not stop
her though and in 2014 Closshey starred in
An Evergreen Christmas with Naomi Judd and
Robert Loggia, a film that was directed by Jeremy Culver and written by
Jeremy and Morgen Culver. She wrote the score for the film, sang in it
and as we already said she had the lead role.
She describes her character, “Evie Lee is creative and trying to find
her voice. I think all of us have this progression that we go through,
whether you are creative or not in finding our own voices. We might
express that finding of our own voices a little differently. If someone
sees their world in numbers they might express their voice in accounting
and love it. If someone expresses their voice as a healer, you have
doctors and nurses or whatever. Evie just happens to be in a creative
spectrum and she is presented with a pretty challenging situation. She
is dealing with her own trauma in the best way that she can and she is
trying to sift through and sort what it is to honor your
responsibilities and your perceived responsibilities, while honoring
your dreams as well. How do you find that balance in life? I think that
is a story most people can relate to in some way, shape or form. We all
have hopes, dreams and aspirations, but we also have bills and taxes and
the necessities of living. How do we bridge any gap that we might
perceive, between an ability to manifest our lives with our dreams and
how do we make that work and how do we find that balance? She is a
character trying to figure out that balance or if it is even possible
for her.”
Has Charleene Closshey discovered that balance? One certainly gets the
impression that she has. At a relatively young age, she has already
accomplished so much and in so many different ways, it is easy to become
excited about what the future holds for her. We have only given you a
glimpse into Charleene Closshey’s life, but there is so much more to
discover, so please check out her music and her films.
Please
visit the website for Charleene Closshey.
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Closshey
says, “I produced the film with my business and life partner Jeremy
Culver. He was the writer and director on this particular script. We
opted to produce as well, because we are gluttons for punishment. It was
a story we wanted to get out there in an efficient (way) and with a very
quick turnaround. The concept came up in March. We had a first draft of
a script by May 1st and we started shooting August first. That
turnaround time for pre-production is unheard of. Because of that we
knew there was a level of intensity and efficiency that needed to be
built into the production process. That also informed the decision to
film in the Tampa area. Knowing what we had on the ground to work with
locally allowed us to more effectively and efficiently build out the
infrastructure that we needed to support ourselves fiscally, as well as
creatively. 
“I
was surrounded by people who instilled and demonstrated the importance
of going after what it is that you are passionate about and what brings
you joy. I am incredibly proud of both of my parents.